Monday, March 27, 2017

TIMBER TIMBRE: An EXCLUSIVE Q&A with TAYLOR KIRK!

STEPHEN SPAZ SCHNEE:SINCERELY, FUTURE POLLUTION is about
to be released. How are you feeling about the album and the reaction you’ve had
to it so far?

TAYLOR KIRK:I’m extremely proud of
the recording. I feel it’s without a doubt the best effort yet. Reactions are
encouraging.

SPAZ: Did the album’s final tone and flow match the way you
had originally intended the album to sound?

TAYLOR:Originally, I had some thought of making
something resembling dance music, or at least danceable. And decidedly
electronic. In that way, expectations were shifted and adjusted to where we
ended up. Apparently dance music is just not in my DNA. But don’t get me wrong.
I can cut a rug.

SPAZ: The album looks outward while also pulling inward
with the often stark and haunting melodies and performances. Is it difficult to
maintain the balance between being an observer and expressing your inner
emotions?

TAYLOR:I think of writing and performing to be just
that. If a goal is to share some emotional insight it requires observation and
consideration. Introspectively and otherwise. Right? Yeah. Far out, man.

SPAZ: Where did you get the title for the album’s opening
track, “Velvet Gloves & Spit”? That’s also the name of an underappreciated Neil Diamond album from the late ‘60s.

TAYLOR:Indeed it is. That title always stuck with me
and frankly always conjured something very “un-Neil Diamond.” It seemed very
mysterious and erotically charged, very sensual and beautiful. Not that Neil
Diamond isn’t all of those things and more… But when the song came along it
seemed to fit over this narrative, which is in part, fiction. Once this
occurred to me I couldn’t have it any other way.

SPAZ:“Grifting” has a laid-back funky feel to it but also manages to
take a few detours into moody synthpop. The whole album is kind of like that.
Do you like the idea of keeping the listener guessing on which direction you’re
going to go in? Or does it boil down to creative restlessness and keeping
things interesting for the band?

TAYLOR:The genre compass of the recording bounced
back and forth as we went along. I think the shift in instrumentation to a
certain era of synthesizer and drum machines had a big role in conjuring style
and feel. Those instruments have a color and sound that we associate with
certain things and we kinda just followed that association. “Grifting” seemed
like a very complex idea, though it isn’t. However, we spent a lot of time
cobbling that together from different parts to make it work.

SPAZ: The album’s haunting quality boils down to the often
sad melodies in songs like “Sewer Blues.” Did you purposely try to cultivate
this type of emotion during the recording of the album or is this a natural
reflection of how you were feeling when writing and recording?

TAYLOR:I’m not sure really. I might be a little bit
haunted. And I definitely might be sad. I don’t actually hear that until it’s
too late, and then I go, ‘shit, I did it again. I thought I was having fun… I
was gonna try and be joyful this time.’

SPAZ: Speaking of writing and recording, how do you build
your songs? Are the music and arrangements dictated by the songs’ subject
matter? Or do the lyrics come after the music? In short, does Timber Timbre
have a ‘formula’?

TAYLOR:Some of the songs arrive in one go, the words
and melody are teased out in the very inventing / playing of the song. That
always feels like a very rare gift, but it does happen occasionally. But one
“formula” would be more like: assembling musical ideas over a long period of
time, cultivating melodies through a very highly sophisticated dialect of utter
babble and gibberish. And then, in the case of this record, using the studio as
a kind of laboratory where we really start to understand what the song is or
could be, through researching texture.

SPAZ: The instrumentals seem to add to the emotion of the
album – the mood and atmosphere says enough. Do you like to leave things open
to the listener in regards to how your music will affect them emotionally?

TAYLOR:I never really have the idea of manipulating
people emotionally. I know that’s strange or hard to fathom but I do not
consider the listener or end user, emotionally at least, when I am making
something. I like the idea of being seductive through sounds and moments, and
providing things that are sonically interesting and pleasurable, with any luck.

SPAZ: Like other critics, I use the word ‘haunting’ to
describe much of your music. It is not dark because you can still feel a sense
of hope within the songs. Is this intentional?

TAYLOR:In the writing and recording and the
making-of-the-thing I am much more cognizant of this ‘sense of hope’ than I am
of my coming across as dark or haunting. So yes, that is the intention.

SPAZ: Being a Canadian band, do you feel you are on the
outside looking in at what is going on in the U.S. politically or do you often
feel that you are in the midst of it all?

TAYLOR:I know there is a very clear distinction but I
also feel that we are all implicated politically in whatever happens in the
U.S. going forward from this moment.